


Three Hundred Miles Outside Salt Lake City

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-06
Updated: 2003-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you just need to get away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Hundred Miles Outside Salt Lake City

Wayne was asleep in the backseat. When Greg glanced into the rearview mirror, he saw Wayne's face pressed into the vinyl. Greg turned down the radio. They were somewhere in Nevada, but the only way he knew that was from reading the road signs on the highway; everything looked the same to him. Greg decided that the fact that he was even considering pulling off the highway and trying to find some tacky cowboy souvenir store, just to break up the monotony of the landscape, was a sign that he had officially gone insane.

Originally, he'd planned to go back up to San Francisco for a few days; Wayne had asked to join him. They both had time off, shows on hiatus, no tours going on. Free as birds. When Wayne had asked to come he'd said sure, sure, buddy, because he liked having company and he liked being with Wayne even more. It was rare that Wayne asked him for anything these days. He planned to take Wayne to the Mission and Pacific Heights and it seemed like the start of a real vacation, with suitcases in the trunk and music on the radio.

Wayne had stayed quiet the whole ride up from Los Angeles to San Francisco, smiling and nodding but preoccupied. When they got to the apartment building and he got out of the car to let Wayne out, Wayne had sat staring at the windshield for a good two minutes and then looked up pleadingly. "Think we could keep going?"

He didn't ask questions, just said yes. It was important to Wayne that they not stop, for whatever reason, and he figured a little more driving wouldn't kill either of them, so he swallowed his disappointment and got back into the car.

What was meant to be a five hour road trip had turned into a marathon, out of California, into Nevada, heading towards Utah with no visible destination. Wayne laughed it off whenever Greg asked what the fuck was going on. He had taken the wheel late last night to let Greg get some sleep. Greg had never slept well on the road; the sensation of moving made him feel sick, and being in the dark felt worse. He woke up in the backseat and saw Wayne's rigid hands on the steering wheel, static and white noise on the radio but Wayne not moving to change the station or pop in one of the mix CDs. Greg fell back into half-sleep and dreamed in anxious, incoherent images.

Wayne shifted in the backseat. The inside of the car was hot and stale; he could see Wayne's skin was glossy with sweat, dark patches forming under his arms and around his collar. Greg shifted his eyes back to the road and squirmed irritably. He turned the air conditioning up a notch. On the radio Paul Simon sang, "It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw," and he wanted to say, "Fuck *you,* Simon, it's really not that dramatic," and that only made him feel petty and stupid, and he wished Wayne would wake up so he would have someone to talk to.

When Wayne woke up, he immediately offered to take the wheel. Greg pulled over and opened the door. Outside it was even hotter than in the car, and his knees shuddered and grumbled when he straightened up. He avoided walking over to the passenger side. He didn't want to get back in the car and wonder if they were ever going to see civilization again. He took a few tentative steps forward and lit a cigarette, trying to avoid looking up at the sky. The sunshine felt overtly hostile.

Wayne came to stand beside him. Greg felt the impatience, heavy and frantic, though Wayne just stared at the skyline and didn't speak.

"*Wait* a minute," Greg said. "We're not exactly late for anything, right?"

Wayne sighed in defeat. "No." He motioned to the cigarette pack in Greg's hand. "Can I get one?"

Greg turned his head and raised an eyebrow. Wayne shrugged at him.

Greg passed over the pack and lighter. Wayne lit up. He smoked quickly, the cigarette jutting from his fingers. Greg made a mental note to tease Wayne later, maybe say something about how Wayne must have been corrupted by exposure to him. Right now he was too hot and cranky to try, and he didn't really think Wayne was in the mood anyway, so Greg looked across the highway towards the mountains in the distance. They rose from the ground at odd angles, not really rolling so much as spiking up. The ground looked rusty.

"This is gold mine country," Greg said. "Like in Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

"But that was in Mexico, wasn't it?"

"Don't remember. Anyway, it's the same thing." Greg flicked his cigarette onto the asphalt and crushed it. "Dudes stuck out in the wilderness going insane over money."

"Yeah," Wayne said. "It's the same thing."

They stopped for gas just after they crossed the border into Utah and raided the convenience store. Greg caught a glimpse of their reflections in the glass door as they approached; they looked like hobos, bloodshot and unshaven in disheveled clothing. He was sure they were breaking some obscure Mormon law by their very presence in the state.

Wayne walked with a slight limp, a remnant from his surgery, months ago. He kept his chin tucked to his chest. "You want to pay for gas, or should I?"

"Doesn't matter to me."

"I'll take it then."

Greg pushed open the door and headed towards the snacks. There were rows and rows of Doritos and Fritos and Funyuns and Pringles and Little Debbies. He wondered if there were any regional specialties, something besides generic crap. For some reason it depressed him to think that every convenience store in America was selling the same food, the same brightly colored, plastic, over processed salt and sugar without identity. He grimly loaded up on whatever he could carry and went for coffee.

Wayne paid for the gas at the register as Greg approached. The clerk, late fifties, lined sunburned face, was eyeing Wayne curiously. Greg slapped the food down on the counter and rubbed at the dried sleep in his eyes. Next to him, Wayne smelled dusty and well-worn.

The clerk said to Wayne, "Hey, mister, aren't you that guy on TV?"

Wayne looked up, mega-watt smile, movie star smile. "Everyone tells me that."

They ate in the car, air conditioning on full blast and plastic bags strewn across the front seat. Wayne, used to Los Angeles fad diets that denied even the existence of trans-fats, looked at it nervously at first and then tore open the bag of salt and vinegar Lays. Bob Dylan sang Tangled Up in Blue on the radio.

"You know, I think we could have found a restaurant," Wayne said. "Couple more miles down the road."

"Road restaurants," Greg said. "I've been in too many of those. Undercooked chicken and grease. You're dancing with botulism once you walk in the door. I'll pick this shit over that shit anytime." He ripped open a Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie, picking fluorescent colored chocolate chips off the top.

"I know the feeling," Wayne said. "When I was in Oahu, they used to give us these raggedy boxed dinners after the late show. I never saw so many bruised apples in my life. When I was in Vegas we got buffet leftovers. Cold ones." He shoves the bag away from him, wiping his fingers on the knees of his pants. "I wasn't thinking about it then."

"What?"

"How bad it was. We'd be sitting there cramming it into our mouths and I was thinking about how I had to get this step right or how I was going to say this line. Then I'd go home and read lines or practice in the mirror. You ever do that?"

Greg made a face. Wayne laughed.

"I swear, I spent years there, and all I saw of it was the theater and my apartment. I couldn't tell you what Oahu looks like if you paid me."

"You should go back there, man. Get reacquainted."

"Don't have the time," Wayne said. He stared into the potato chips, crumpling the bag in his palms. "You know, I started pretending I was on television when I was six years old."

"We all started out doing that, buddy," Greg said. "It's why we're here."

"I guess," Wayne said. "Did you stop?"

"What?"

"When you're pretending and you keep seeing yourself on television and then you stop, because it's not pretend any more, it's just real, and it's just there and it's just. There." Wayne's voice was very low, spoken into his chest.

Greg brushed the dashboard with his fingertips. Outside the car was all highway and desert, the mountains disappearing behind them. "Nowadays I don't pretend I'm on TV anymore," he said. "Pretend I'm in a band sometimes. If I'm really bummed out I pretend I'm a Supreme Court Justice. But funnier."

Wayne laughed. Greg leaned over and let his hand rest on the back of Wayne's neck, rubbing against tightened muscles. "It's not who you are, buddy. Just don't start thinking it all begins and ends on TV."

"Yeah, I know," Wayne said, embarrassed but rolling his neck against Greg's hand, stubble-roughened chin brushing his palm and Greg reminded himself that Wayne was more than ten years younger than he was. He could say, "You're too young for a midlife crisis," but that sounded ridiculous; it was something they all went through, sooner or later, the only question was how to deal with it.

Greg demanded that they stop at a motel before it started to get dark; he wasn't about to drive through another night, and he needed a shower. They got off the main highway, drove past strip mall after strip mall until they reached something called the Down Home Inn, which had a sign of an overly cheery, red-cheeked woman fluffing a pillow. The motel itself was the traditional red brick one-story, with a pool in the back that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in some time.

The motel room was colored pink, as though it had been sprayed with Pepto-Bismol. There was a tiny clock radio on the table in between the two twin beds. Above the No Smoking sign was a framed Bible verse: Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. Greg put his suitcase down and sighed.

"Damn," Wayne said behind him. "I mean, *damn.*"

"It's a place to crash," Greg said. "I'm just going to keep thinking that. You want to shower first or should I?"

Neither of them showered. Greg sat down on the bed to get his shoes off and fell asleep next to his opened suitcase. He woke up in the dark, switched on the table lamp and saw Wayne curled up on the other bed, shirt unbuttoned halfway.

Greg groaned, got up and took a change of clothes from the suitcase. He planned to burn the clothes he was wearing later.

Standing in the shower, the rubber treads rough on the soles of his feet, he remembered he'd played Utah, years ago, in some backwater motor lodge in Moab. He'd had a mediocre set. Afterwards, unable to face going back to his room, he'd driven around Moab, searching for anything that wasn't cheerful and bland and empty. He'd wound up at the dump, which, given his mood, was the only place he felt inclined to stop. He walked to the fence, ignoring the sweetish, decayed garbage smell hovering in the air, and hooked his fingers through the chain links.

The sun was just setting, turning the sky pink and purple and gold. There were mountains beyond the canyons; at first they seemed incongruously placed in the Utah desert, snowy peaks tapering into green and brown pine, rising from red dirt. The canyons seemed unfinished in comparison, a haphazard mixture of dust and stone. As the sun grew lower, he saw the landscape begin to blur together, the mountains turning dark blue and the canyons turning brown, until he couldn't tell where one began and the other ended. It all seemed to him to be composed of rock and earth, hundreds of thousands of years old, growing into a sky that went on forever, and he had to fight to keep from turning away or bursting into tears, like an overwhelmed child.

He joked about it afterwards, saying, "Fuckin' typical, best part of the city's at the goddamned *dump,*" but it didn't come easily. Even now, more than twenty years later, he still regarded the moment with a mixture of wonder and unease. Cynicism had briefly failed him, and it scared him a little, he was so used to walking into situations with shields up.

He recapped the little shampoo bottle and set it down. His hair smelled vaguely of rubbing alcohol and mint. He picked up a towel and went to the sink.

Shaven and blown dry, he walked out to the other room. Wayne was sitting up on the bed, looking at the TV.

"Hey," he said, voice still croaky from sleep. "You take more time in the bathroom than a girl, you know?"

"Hey, man, it takes *time* to look this good." Greg flung himself back on the bed and balled his dirty clothes up, shoving them to the bottom of his suitcase. "You're up."

Wayne wandered towards the bathroom, holding his clean clothes to his chest. Greg reached for the remote and channel-surfed; all he could find was Oprah reruns. The shower hissed in the bathroom. Greg turned the sound down low on the television and stared at his feet, then poked at the soft expanse of his belly detachedly.

The water turned off. Ten minutes later Wayne emerged, sleek and clean, and hopped on the bed beside Greg. "What are we watching?"

"Damned if I know."

Wayne looked at the TV. He rolled over onto his side, one arm flung above Greg's head, the other resting by his waist. "This the way you pictured the vacation going?"

"Well," Greg said. "I was thinking more along the lines of riding in a trolley and maybe going to Alcatraz. So that would be a no."

"I really *wanted* to go," Wayne said. "I did. But when we got there, I just couldn't stop. You know? I just couldn't get out of the car."

"We've still got time," Greg said.

"I think I've missed out on the whole country," Wayne said.

"No. Not yet."

Wayne's hand brushed the top of his head, separating the strands, smoothing them out between two fingers, and then letting them go. Greg's impulse was to look up and smile, but he restrained himself; he felt instinctively that this was unfamiliar territory for Wayne. Any move at all would scare him off. Greg pressed his palms into the bedspread and stared at the TV.

"I guess I have to go back," Wayne said. "Sometime. Soon."

"Sometime. Yeah."

Wayne had stopped his tentative grooming of Greg's hair. His fingers rested on top of Greg's forehead, smoothing the skin back. He smelled of glycerine.

Outside the wind had picked up. They were in the desert; it got cold at night. "Greg," Wayne said.

"Uh-huh," Greg said, barely able to formulate words. Wayne's knee was pressing into his. But Wayne was already pulling away, freaking out a little. He took his hand away.

"Never mind."

"Wayne," Greg said quietly.

"Yeah?" Wayne sat on the edge of the bed, looking guiltily at him.

"You know I'd go anywhere you asked me to," Greg said.

Wayne said nothing. Greg sat up and pulled him close, Wayne still a little tense, a little unsure. "I will," Greg repeated, "go anywhere you ask me to."

Wayne let his breath out. He nuzzled Greg's shoulder, and Greg knew he would pull away again in a minute or two, that it was important to be patient and see what would happen.

"I guess," Wayne said, "I should ask you to take me back."

"Nothing would make me happier."


End file.
